The Data Dude – Early Literacy

children_readingBelieve it or not, the Dude is working on next year’s public library survey, scheduled to launch around mid-November, 2015. And to those of you who I promised no major changes, I apologize. There will be changes and some will be major. Some will be minor. Before you get bent out of shape, let me explain that some of the major changes will be for the better; clarifying some things that were difficult to understand in the past, pre-filling more data to help you with the survey, and hopefully make your life a bit easier during survey time. For today’s post, the focus is something the Dude read on early literacy; specifically the well known library program called 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten. Many Nebraska libraries offer this program. It’s generally thought to be a passive library program, but nonetheless, you can count it as a children’s program on your survey. If you are looking for more information about the program, read this article about three-year olds Gidget and Jaycee Crocker, from McCook, Nebraska. Most would agree that these are good programs, helping to promote early literacy and familial connections. However, we have no data on these types of early literacy programs. On the next survey, you will be asked how many children’s programs are specifically focused on early learning and literacy (pre-K)? And remember, while we would like you to collect and report the data, if you simply don’t have it this year because you have not yet implemented a mechanism for counting, you can look to the minus 1 (-1), which is entered when the data is not available or not collected. Now, as the Dude pointed out before, the minus 1 isn’t always the desired answer, but sometimes it is the best one. Shaka.  
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1 Response to The Data Dude – Early Literacy

  1. Linda in Orchard says:

    Anything that makes reporting easier gets my vote!

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